


A Taste of Divinity

by FadedSepia



Series: Brace [2]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: AU, Baking, Christmas, Fluff, Glitter, Holiday, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 18:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13129974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadedSepia/pseuds/FadedSepia
Summary: Duo Maxwell and his new - squee! - boyfriend start of their Christmas celebrations... with only a few minor hitches.





	A Taste of Divinity

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Christmas-y after story to Brace, a current WIP 3x2 I'm still finishing. It's not particularly spoiler-filled for the main plot of the other story, and works well as a standalone, too. Hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Thanks to Clara for beta-reading.

_‘Fourteen pots. Fourteen fricken’ pots of this shit!’_ For the umpteenth time that day, Duo Maxwell shook his head and a tiny fall of glitter dusted his shoulders. Again. How in nine hells had anyone ever thought combining glitter and children was a good idea?! Whoever it was, he could only hope that Trevor Pivens-Moreau found _them_ and dumped fourteen pots of glitter on _their_ head!

_‘Least restrictive educational environment my ass!’_

After five years, Duo Maxwell could well and truly say he hated glitter season. Of course, when you taught in an elementary school, glitter season was one continuous run from a month into the school year until the last moments before the end… But the worst, by far, was the time just before the December holidays.

 _‘Damned art herpes is gonna get on everything!’_ He considered muttering a special pre-Christmas curse for old Ms. Noin. As a favour – which would only take a sec, she promised – he had agreed to step across the hall and cover her kindergarten class for story-time so that she could use the restroom. He and Hilde had combined their classes for a year-end activity, half the students were gone anyway, so it had seemed the charitable thing to do.

But as he’d been reading to the otherwise enraptured group of kindergartners, one of the more adventurous students had slipped behind Duo, and gotten his hands on the craft-table glitter tray. Within a blink, he’d pitched the entire thing into the circle time corner, all over Duo’s head and back. Ms. Noin had returned to the pandemonium of Duo trying to recover from glitter-gedon.

The next twenty minutes had consisted only of muttering, vacuuming, and taking several students to the eye-wash station in the nurse’s office. The children had finally been settled just in time for Ms. Noin’s husband to come in dressed as a disturbingly sober-looking St. Nicholas, placating the little beasts with sugar as Duo slipped back to his own classroom.

He’d spent the rest of the afternoon trying not to pout, especially at Hilde, who found the entire thing all too amusing. Then there had been the mandatory last day of school meeting and ‘funcheon,’ during which Mueller had described him as an ‘escapee from the ornament factory.’ Following that, the walk to the bus-stop, during which his Christmas themed tie and snowman print scarf had done nothing except combine with the glitter to make him look like a grown man impersonating a Christmas elf. Forty-minutes into his bus ride, a little girl had had asked if he actually _was_ an elf. His response that, no, he was actually the Sugar Plum Fairy had amused the her, if not her parents.

But that didn’t matter now. Glancing up at his apartment, he saw the tree lighting the window and smiled. He was home. _Trowa_ was home. In his apartment! For the entire weekend. _‘And no Friday morning bus duty to interrupt us…’_

Despite the cold on the stairwell, Duo Maxwell could feel more blood rushing up to colour his ears. The newness of it all was still overwhelming some days. Especially when he realized how long it had been since he’d shared the holiday with _anyone_ that wasn’t a colleague or his pops… or his cat. _‘I’m having a sleepover… with my boyfriend!’_

Fighting to contain his excitement, Duo slid the key home and opened the door. This was what Christmas should be about: tastefully arranged gaudy decorations on every available surface, festive music blaring from the stereo, cat on the sofa playing with a sparkly tinsel cat-toy, boyfriend cursing as the scent of burning sugar wafted through the- ‘ _Burning sugar?! 2’ _“Trowa? Are you okay?!”

“Don’t come in here!” A loud metallic thud, followed by more invective, sounded from around the corner in the kitchen. “I’m fine, just- just don’t come in! Shit, shit, shit…”

Duo ignored his urgings, dropped his bag on the sofa – startling Shi-chan – and headed for the kitchen. Heavy was pacing back and forth before the doorway. She looked plaintively up at him, and Duo patted her head, then looked up to survey the damage.

At first glance, it was a normal, if messy, kitchen. Trowa had mentioned making sweets, and had clearly done so earlier. Impressive plates of brownies, chocolate chip and raisin cookies, seven-layer bars, and what might even have been marzipan were at one end of the counter. Most of his glass bakeware was piled into the sink. Everything he’d expected when Trowa had mentioned coming by to bake. The other side of the kitchen, however, was a sight!

The glass-top stove was a disaster in its own right. The lidded pot closest to him jiggled on its burner, tiny wisps of black smoke seeping out of it. Another pan, hastily jostled off a burner into the center, frothed out something golden and sticky looking. His double boiler hissed loudly from the back burner, forgotten in the chaos.

The counter wasn’t much better. Flour or, judging from the burning smell, sugar made tiny drifts where the countertop and range met the backsplash. To the side, on parchment paper, sat strips what looked like chunky white taffy. These were surrounded with similarly coloured blobs, splatters, and one drip that, by the speed of it, Duo just _knew_ was going to be a sticky nightmare to clean. On the other side of the range, a glass bowl sat piled high with eggshells. Some had spilled onto the counter, leaving slimy trails behind them. There were nuts on the floor, along with a tipped over box of raisins.

In the middle of it all stood Trowa, his back to the doorway, green half apron around his waist, a final pot held in his hand.

“You sure you’re okay?” Duo braved a step into the kitchen, noting the unusual stickiness of his floor. Then he took a second half-tripping step as Heavy decided he’d given her permission to enter and start licking some of the stray raisins from the floor.

“I’m fine, don’t touch me.”

Duo stopped, taken aback by the sharp edge to his voice. “I won’t, Tro…”

“I followed the recipe _exactly_ , and it still came out like this!” Trowa’s voice rose in pitch as he turned, showing yet another bubbling pot full of whitish lumps of sugary goo. There were unshed tears in his eyes, and powdered sugar across his nose. And down the front of his gansey. And in his… Duo stifled a giggle, eyeing his boyfriend’s sugar dusted bangs.

“Hon, what happened?”

“I was just…” Trowa gestured impotently around at the mess in the kitchen, then looked down at the floor. Taking a deep breath, he continued. “You said you really liked making Christmas cookies with Howard… and your big3?”

“Yes, I remember.” Making Christmas cookies, first with Helen, and then with Howard, had always shone as some of Duo’s happiest holiday memories.

“And then I asked if I could use your family recipes to bake some for the holiday.”

“Mmhmm.”

“And I found one of Helen’s in the back, and you’d written notes on it, with little stars, and marked it as your favourite.” The recipe card in question was one of the only things not coated in sugar, safely stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. “But when I tried to make it, it just..! I wanted to surprise you…” Trowa’s voice cracked a little as his shoulders slumped further, even as Duo pulled him into a hug.

“Duo, don’t, I’m covered in crap-“

“Don’t care, Honey, you’re still sweet…”

“Honey?” Trowa quirked a brow; Duo’s usual pet name for him wasn’t often the full word.

“Well, given the circumstances, maybe I should call you _‘Sugar?_ ’” Duo leaned out of the hug to smirk up at him. He was rewarded with a sticky, sugar-coated hand pressed across his face.

“You clearly aren’t mad at me if you can pull out lame teacher humour.” Trowa dropped his hand to Duo’s waist, returning the hug.

“My teacher humour is of only the highest caliber, good sir.” Duo tapped the end of his nose, pouting for effect.

“You’re really not mad about… all this?”

Not really, no…” He did sigh, thinking for just a moment about how long this mess would take to clean. He took the pot from Trowa’s hand and put it back on the stove. This was nothing that a lot of warm water and elbow grease couldn’t at least soften up. Once he was certain that all the burners were off, Duo turned back to the taller man.

“Helen used to say it got its name because of the heavenly taste… and the Godly intervention needed to get the recipe to turn out properly. She wasn’t really wrong. You have to worry about humidity, temperature. Heck, the _elevation_ can screw it up, hon. That recipe’s been tweaked every time I’ve moved. Even _I_ get it wrong half the time,” Duo held his hand up for emphasis, pointing to a few faint, whitish scars across the back, “and I have the sugar burns to prove it.”

He leaned back in half-hug against Trowa’s shoulder, offering a very clear view of his own sparkling hair. “Besides, you’re not the only one that had to deal with a mess today.”

“Mmm… I’m sure you brought such joy with your… _festive_ styling technique.”

If it had been anyone else, like Hilde, Duo would have pinched them. But Trowa was warm and solid in his arms, and he didn’t really feel like moving.

Trowa cleared his throat, shifting a bit as he tried to gently nudge Duo out of his reverie. “So… should I clean up now? It seems we’re both a bit…” The shrug wasn’t necessary, but it added emphasis, underscoring just what a mess the two really were.

“I think Heavy can take care of it for us, right girl?”

At the sound of her name, the dog lifted her head to look at him. Receiving no instruction, she went back to trying to get at some shredded coconut that had gotten wedged by the bin.

“She’s on it. But you’re right, we do need to clean up.” The smirk was back in place, but a just noticeable blush accompanied it, warming his ears and the back of his neck. “After all, as a good host, I’ve got to help clean up the candy-coated cutie in my kitchen. He may not be the neatest, but he’s certainly the sweetest.”

“Duo…” Trowa rolled his visible eye, returning the barest hint of a smile. As he kissed his boyfriend’s cheek, he’d worked up to a low chuckle. “Your wordplay leaves much to be desired.”

“Yeah, I know you only love me for my ass… onance.4” Duo ducked his head and nuzzled further into Trowa’s sweater. Despite his words, and even knowing that they had a lot of work ahead, he was content to stay as they were for a tad longer. Trowa seemed to agree as he pulled Duo just a bit more tightly, beginning to hum along to the music.

The burning smell had mostly dissipated, so Duo could breathe in a good whiff of that pleasant, Trowa-y scent. The holiday music played on, slightly softer here in the kitchen. Trowa’s dog was doing her little tripod walk around their legs, snuffling raisins and bits of gooey nuts and sugar off the floor. His – it was still so exciting – _boyfriend_ was standing in his kitchen, holding him close. _This_ was what Christmas was all about.

**Author's Note:**

> Supremely sappy, but it was written in less that 24 hours, so ya’ll can deal with it.
> 
> 1 – The title is taken from the dessert Trowa failed miserably at making. Divinity is a fluffy, nougat-like dessert, sometimes made with pecans or walnuts added in for texture. It has a consistency very similar to meringue; it’s made with most of the same ingredients. However, it is made with very hot, semi-aerated sugar instead of cold sugar. Getting the process right can vary depending on day, temperature, air pressure, etc., and working with boiling sugar is always hazardous. All in all, Trowa got off pretty easily with just getting sugar coated.
> 
> 2 – There was a post going around on tumblr about the amazing ability of fanfiction characters to recognize smells. For those of you that haven’t smelled burning sugar, allow me to assure you that, like vomit, feces, jasmine, and corpses, it is a very distinct smell; once you’ve smelled it, thereafter, you will always recognize it. Duo doesn’t have a magickal nose. He’s probably just burned enough things to recognize that scent of burning.
> 
> 3 – Just as some background for this AU if you haven’t/don’t want to read the longer fic this goes with: Howard is Duo’s foster, then adoptive, dad in this world. Helen was his big sister from the big sister/big brother program at his rec-center. She’s not his actual big sister, nor is she his fraternity sponsor.
> 
> 4 – I know it’s technically alliteration, but I couldn’t see Duo passing up an ass joke.
> 
> 5 – Also, Shinigami (Shi-chan) is Duo’s tuxedo cat. Heavy is Trowa’s three-legged mix breed mutt.
> 
> 6 – Lastly, I’d like to express my thanks to @claraxbarton over on tumblr for encouraging me to get back into writing for the fandom.


End file.
